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OCW supports independent study for N.J. high school students (via MIT News)

Here at OCW we’ve been enjoying the opportunity to get to know Eric Sheninger, principal of New Milford High School in Bergen County, N.J., and his amazing students. New Milford High has been using OCW to support an independent study program for seniors, an effort we’ve chronicled in this MIT News piece:

When your high school principal has 36,000 followers on Twitter and sent out more than 22,000 tweets in four years, you can bet that he’s open to new ideas for using technology to improve education. The most recent experiment for Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_Principal), principal of New Milford High School in Bergen County, N.J., has been the creation of an independent study program that allows seniors to follow OpenCourseWare classes for credit.

“When I learned about OpenCourseWare, I felt that it was the perfect fit for our goals,” Sheninger says. “The breadth, depth and quality of the OCW materials meant we could give our students a challenging, structured opportunity to really pursue whatever interested them most.”

The independent study program is meant to complement New Milford’s larger “Academy” initiative, which is a school-wide venture that gives students an edge in college admissions by exposing them to a broader choice of more specialized learning opportunities than those offered in a standard high school curriculum. Students can follow courses from one of three tracks — Arts and Letters, STEM or Global Leadership — and earn a special diploma through those credits. Read more.

Eric and two of his students, Tariq Khan and Caleb Gomez, were kind enough to share a video of one of the end-of-year presentations from the program, which we are happy to share with you:

Is your high school using OCW? Let us know by e-mailing us at ocw@mit.edu.